[doteka]

You can pay these devs by purchasing one of the machines the software comes bundled with, that’s what pays their salary.

Apple is an integrator, they are not in the business of selling you just commodity hardware. People who buy their products do so in large part because the experience is better than what they would get buying the same hardware from random Chinese OEM 274.

But if you’re on the commodity hardware spiel: I challenge you to match the specs of any laptop Apple sells in a laptop by another manufacturer (and actually match, not replacing NVMe ssds with some random SATA part etc) and come anywhere near 50% or even 70% of the price.

[throwlaplace]

>not replacing NVMe ssds with some random SATA part etc) and come anywhere near 50% or even 70% of the price.

this has been done over and over again. i'm not going to go through the tedious process just to have you ultimately declare victory anyway when i can't source their superduper proprietary butterfly/centipede/tarantula keyboard or their retina/cornea/myopia display.